Accountants for veterinary practices in London

The veterinary market in London, and what it does to your numbers

London holds every kind of veterinary business at once: single-site first opinion practices across the boroughs, multi-branch independents, referral-only centres, dedicated out-of-hours providers, and the teaching hospitals of the Royal Veterinary College.

Because the range is that wide, a benchmark drawn from “London veterinary practices” describes nobody. The honest comparator is the CMA's own financial work: a sample of 36 small independent veterinary firms with EBIT margins running from minus 9% to plus 34%, a weighted average of 11% across 2021 to 2023, and 24 of the 36 seeing margins fall over those three years. A first opinion practice, a referral centre and an out-of-hours provider are three different businesses with three different cost bases and three different exposures to the CMA remedies, so the first job on any London engagement is establishing which one is in front of us. The profitability calculator puts your own margin against that sample.

The cost line that moved most recently is business rates, and it moved against practices rather than for them. From 1 April 2026 a practice pays the small business multiplier of 43.2p only where its rateable value does not exceed £50,999, the standard 48.0p above that, and 50.8p where the rateable value reaches £500,000. London rateable values push a great many practices past a threshold that a comparable practice elsewhere sits under, and the lower Retail, Hospitality and Leisure multipliers of 43.0p and 38.2p are not available to a veterinary practice at all. It is worth checking which multiplier your bill is actually built on, because it is a line most practices inherit rather than examine.

What changes because you are in England — and what does not

Two things are worth stating before anything else, because they are the two an English practice is most often told wrongly. The RCVS regulates veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses across the whole United Kingdom, and it has no statutory power over the businesses they work in — so nothing about your practice's regulation changes at a national border, and nothing about it is signed off by a regulator at all. And the CMA's draft Order is UK-wide: draft Article 1(3) says in terms that it extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Being in England gives you no different set of remedies and no different implementation window.

What England does have to itself is business rates. From 1 April 2026 England runs five multipliers: a standard 48.0p, a small business rate of 43.2p where the rateable value does not exceed £50,999, two lower Retail, Hospitality and Leisure multipliers of 43.0p and 38.2p, and a high-value multiplier of 50.8p where the rateable value reaches £500,000. A veterinary practice is not a Retail, Hospitality and Leisure property, so it pays 48.0p, 43.2p or 50.8p and never the lower two — which means the coverage that framed April 2026 as a business rates cut for high-street premises was not written about you. The 2026 revaluation took effect on 1 April 2026, on values based on rents at the 1 April 2024 valuation date, and a redesigned transitional relief scheme phases increases over three years. None of those figures apply in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

London at a glance

• Nation — England
• Who regulates you — the RCVS, which regulates veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses across the whole United Kingdom, and not the businesses they work in
• The CMA Order — extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland under draft Article 1(3), and has not been made: the CMA's own deadline for making it is 23 September 2026
• Veterinary medicines — the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013, in force since 1 October 2013 and amended most recently with effect from 17 May 2024
• Written prescription validity — up to six months from the date of signing as standard, or 28 days for a controlled drug, unless the prescriber specifies a shorter period
• Premises registration — £38 a year per premises, exempt from VAT, renewing 1 April, every branch separately
• Income tax on practice profits — the UK rates and bands — a personal allowance of £12,570, 20% up to £37,700 of taxable income, 40% to £125,140 and 45% above it, with the allowance and the basic rate limit frozen to 5 April 2031
• Business rates — England's five multipliers from 1 April 2026 — standard 48.0p, small business 43.2p, and 50.8p where the rateable value reaches £500,000. A veterinary practice is not a Retail, Hospitality and Leisure property
• Your size under the Order — a Small Veterinary Business unless the business has 15 or more first opinion practices and/or out-of-hours centres, which almost every independent is, wherever it trades

Where London practices recruit from

The Royal Veterinary College, part of the University of London, is one of the nine schools whose veterinary degrees the RCVS lists as approved, and it is the only one in London. It runs two campuses — Camden in central London and Hawkshead near Potters Bar in Hertfordshire — with the RVC Beaumont Sainsbury Animal Hospital at Camden and the Queen Mother Hospital for Animals at Hawkshead. For a practice that hires new graduates that proximity is an asset with a price attached. Every vet who graduated in 2021 or later has to complete the RCVS Veterinary Graduate Development Programme, and a practice employing one must be an RCVS-Approved Graduate Development Practice with a designated VetGDP Adviser — a veterinary surgeon with at least three years on the UK practising register — giving the graduate at least an hour of protected time a week. That hour is a real cost and it belongs in the budget rather than in somebody's goodwill.

Premises, branches and the register

London practices are branch-heavy, and premises registration is charged per premises. A main site and three branches that store or supply medicines is four registrations on the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises, at £38 each a year, exempt from VAT, all renewing on 1 April. The CMA's ownership disclosure duty in draft Article 5 works the same way — signage, premises, websites and communications, site by site — and so does the price list duty in draft Article 7, which is where a group with branches has to decide whether its branch prices are genuinely the same, because once they are published the answer is public.

What we do for London veterinary businesses

• Owners and principals — annual accounts and the tax return, VAT, and management figures that arrive early enough to change a decision
• Pricing and the CMA package — price lists by weight band, the parasiticide list, written estimates and itemised bills, modelled against your own profit and loss first
• Your team — payroll and auto-enrolment for vets, nurses, reception and support staff, with the Employment Rights Act 2025 dates tracked as they land
• Structure — the sole trader against limited company question answered on your practice's real numbers, including the associated-companies divisor
• Deals — buying, selling, or taking a partner in, with no valuation multiples attached because no primary source publishes any
• Locums — self assessment, expenses and IR35 in both regimes, which turns on the size of the practice engaging you

What we would look at first in a London practice

In a London practice the first thing we establish is which business we are looking at, because the answer decides everything after it. A first opinion practice carries the whole CMA package: the standard price list by weight band, the parasiticide list, written estimates where the cost is reasonably likely to reach £500 including VAT, itemised bills, the complaints process and the prescription fee cap. A referral centre is inside the Order's scope for other duties but does not count towards the fifteen first opinion practices and out-of-hours centres that make a business Large rather than Small. After that we go to the rateable value, because a practice sitting a few hundred pounds over £50,999 is paying 48.0p rather than 43.2p and nobody has usually checked.

Do you need an accountant in London itself?

No, and it is worth saying why rather than simply asserting it. Everything runs remotely — video and phone around consulting hours rather than ours, records and approvals handled securely online. What you gain by widening the search past your postcode is a practice that already knows what premises registration is charged on, which IR35 regime a locum falls into and what the CMA's draft Order does and does not require, without being taught any of it. What you would gain from proximity is a shorter drive to a meeting that happens over video anyway. Tell us where your practice stands and we will tell you honestly whether we can add anything — and the eight free calculators ask for nothing at all if you would rather look first.